steady state

Romana had to be in Pardubice for work. Usually she has her appointments in the morning and is back in time to coach her girls, but today I volunteered to look after them.

They had scheduled 1500m intervals (3 of them) on the erg, which was sensible given the predictions of freezing temperatures and a 4 Beaufort wind, which can throw nasty chop on our lake. However, when we arrived at the rowing club, it was sunny and the wind direction was such that there was a lot of rowable water. Three girls: Lenka, 15, and an experienced rower. Iva, 14, who has rowed in the girls 13/14 category, and Klara, 17, who is just learning to row. I decided to take them in the quad and do technique/extensive Steady State. I promised them I will explain to Romana. I also promised they will not escape from the OTE intervals.

I put the “girls double” on 3 and 4, Klara on 2 and I rowed bow position to take care of the course and to keep an eye on Klara as the least experienced. But she picked up quite well. We did rowing by pairs on the first 1km. Then we used the second warming up km to work our way to a full stroke, starting with hands only, etc. After 3km we were rowing steady enough that we could add some pressure. So the training ended up to be low stroke rate (17-18spm) with high pressure and a sloooow recovery to feel the boat run (and give Klara some time to sequence everything right).

Worked out pretty well and it was fun to do. Turns out, I thought I was doing nothing myself, but when I did some stretching this evening I found out that I had taxed my muscles a bit. So far, so good.

I posted about rankings earlier today. Here is a pic of my mate Arjan and myself studying the rankings / results in Hazewinkel:

The results were also on-line immediately after the race but I like the old-fashioned way of discovering the results on a notice board and discussing them immediately with your opponents.

Cycled home from work today. As usual. Average HR 128, 43 minutes. As an experiment I used the Strava app on the iphone to record the ride. The advantage is that it gets correctly marked as a bike ride and automatically uploaded to Strava. Then Tapiriik does it’s magic and it all appears in SportTracks and Garmin Connect as well.

https://www.strava.com/activities/404166429

After dinner I set up a 30 minute and a 25 minute session on RowPro. The 30 minute session was a solo row, but for the 25 min I had company from the UK. I did steady state with bursts. In the 30 minute session I did a faster 1 minute every 6 minutes. Same for the 25 minute session, but with a 5 minute cycle. The “bursts” were at 22, 24, 26, 28 & 30 spm in the 30 minute row and at 30, 28, 26, 24 & 22 spm in the 25 minute row.

Up at 3:20 to travel to the airport. A few meetings in Brussels and 2 flights later, I arrive in my hotel room in Toulouse Blagnac at 11:30pm. No training.

Tuesday

If I wanted to get some exercise in, I had to get up at 6am and work out in the hotel gym. Did that. I had to enter the date and time into the Concept2 erg and adjust the brightness so it didn’t show Mura defects.

The plan was to do a 4x2km intensive session, but after such a long day and a short night, I discovered during the warming up that I didn’t have the mental strength to do it.

So after the 2km warming up I did 20 minutes steady state. Very easy, because I didn’t feel like more:

Then I did a few strength exercises. Three sets of eight repeats for each exercise. I discovered a mat and a Pezzi ball, so I used them for situps, back, classical pushups. I also did squats, and all the arm and shoulder exercises possible with the fitness machine, adjusting the weights after the first set if necessary. Thirty minutes in total. It was a bit light on the legs in my opinion. Overall it was probably a bit light but I want to gradually work this into my routine, not do an all out once and then never again.

The Pullman hotel gym. There’s a mirror so it’s much smaller than it looks on the picture

Then a 1km cooling down and some stretching. Has to be enough for the day.

Having dinner at the Brussels Airlines lounge at Brussels, I finished my exercise planner in excel. It calculates time in different zones. I already used it today to capture what I have done so far this week and adjust the rest of the week to hit the right percentages and fit my schedule.

Well, that’s interesting. I am thinking of I would work that into my training program. During winter, I frequently run. I have lovely hilly forests starting just behind my home, so trail running is always a pleasure. Also, running is my go-to cross-training when on travel. Running gear doesn’t add much weight to my travel luggage.

With my recently purchased second-hand mountain bike, the mountain biking is nice as well, although I must say I am not really a downhill MTB hero. Too scared to fall. I have also been experimenting with replacing some of my car or public transport commutes with the bike. It is great, although it does come with breathing car exhaust, microparticles, etc. At least under the new city council it has become slightly safer (a few more bike lanes). With showers and a locker at work, the infrastructure seems in place. Just wondering how this plan is going to hold when ice and snow make it difficult.

I love cross country skiing and plan to do this in weekends in the winter. It’s perfect cross-training. I also plan to have at least one week of vacation/training camp in the mountains.

All in all I think I can get in 2.5 hours of cross training per week.

For strength training, Das Buch has the following remarks.

Strength training is very important for Masters rowers to limit muscle decline with age

Different types of strength training have different effects. For Masters rowers, the most important type is the one that improves energy flow to the muscle. This can be achieved by:

Boat/erg training

Circuit training – 1 set at each exercise, go to next exercise, repeat

“Station Training” – several sets of each exercise, then go to next exercise

At another page, Das Buch talks about 2 times per week, 40 minutes each, emphasize core and shoulder

Introduce variation. Not always the same exercise per muscle group.

Do not do strength training after an exhausting endurance training

Here is my summary of the strength trainings that I found in the book:

I also learned a few German acronyms that were unexplained in the book, so I had to Google them. I copy them here for fun:

KA = Kraft Ausdauer

SK = Schnellkraft

IK = Intramuskulaere Koordination

MK = Maximalkraft

Romana does a circuit training on Friday afternoons with her training group of 15-18 year old girls. I could try to join them. Perhaps the weights will be a bit on the light side, but I could do more repeats. More than half of the exercises on Romana’s circuit training use own body weight anyway.

For the “station training” I could try to visit a fitness club in the neighborhood.

Alternatively, I could buy the basic stuff and do circuit and weights at home.

Not decided yet.

Finally, Das Buch describes how to improve coordination. The book recommends to work on this 2-3 times per week, 4-10 exercises, and suggests playing games, dancing, other sports and “proprioceptic training”. They also comment that OTW rowing falls under coordination exercise, but needs complementary training.

Well, I have a fitness ball at home, so I could do situps and pushups using the fitness ball. Is that enough coordination training? I don’t know.

Today’s training

I had steady state on the training program. Next weekend, I will row a sprint race in the double with my daughter Lenka. So we took out our double and did 12km of steady state, including technique drills and start drills.

Nice steady state training. Tomorrow: A 6km head race simulation in the single.

After the training I helped bring a launch from our Lake Center to the River Club House, using my trailer. Coming Wednesday, there will be the first Brno Academic Rowing Races. Two eights will row a race on the river Svratka in Jundrov. One eight filled with students from the Technical University, the other one with students from the Masaryk University. The 2.5km race course is quite narrow and has many turns.

The idea is to make it a tradition and stimulate student rowing in Brno. I am slightly skeptical, but if it succeeds it will be great.

Today, I had headwind for the entire outing. On the way towards the castle I was rowing with a bungee, so it feels like rowing into a headwind. I removed the bungee for the headwind stretch from the castle back to the club. There was a strong wind and the stretch around the nude beach was quite choppy. When I was rowing with the bungee, the splash I created combined with the chop made the water flow over the XGPS160, which it obviously didn’t like, because suddenly i had 2600m done, where I am usually around 2km. Looking at the data now, somehow the way towards the castle was 1000m longer than the way back. Also there is a suspicious pace peak starting at 1300m, exactly around the nude beach.

Here is a close-up of a very suspicious part of my trajectory:

XGPS glitch – my real trajectory was very close to the smooth one taken on the way back

On the way back you can see that area around the nude beach as the dip in pace where I go slower than 2:50.

My training plan said Steady State but in the fall I like to take out the bungee and make it more like a Wolverine L4 workout. Rowing towards the castle I was between 16 and 18spm.

… well, I have spent enough time in boats during the vacation, but they were sailing boats. For example on Thursday we did a big tour of about 40km on Fluessen lake. There wasn’t much wind, about 2 Beaufort, but it was fun.

I will not give a full update of my training activities during the vacation, but I will add one picture of my Saturday afternoon run, a 13km affair where I finally found the way around the small lake next to our rented cottage. It involved climbing over a few fences and running through a meadow with cows, but it was marked as a public footpath. It’s the part where I return to the shores of the small lake and then cross to an even smaller lake. I did a 2 minute break at the end of that. You can see my HR going down there.

Yesterday I covered 1100km in 10:45 hours, in a car. 🙂

Today was the first day back in the single. There was quite a strong wind so I went up to the castle and back, just steady state in 18-20spm. Heart rate around 145-150, pace around 2:20 with tailwind, 2:29 to 2:35 with headwind.

I used RIM to analyze my stroke. First time after I changed the length of my scull (added 2cm of length, keeping inboard and span the same). Here are the metrics:

The yellow and purple lines are today. The green, gray and brown ones are from June 16. Check factor and stroke efficiency are in the same ballpark. It seems “catch efficiency” has improved a bit, which seems logical as I changed the gearing slightly. Still wondering though if the changes are significant.

By the way, on purpose I didn’t write “rigged heavier” or something like that. After reading this discussion on rec.sport.rowing I try to avoid that. Still, with the same handle speed at the catch I expect to be accelerating the boat slightly more with my new rigging parameters.